Yeah so wow it's been what...like three months since I've
used this. Well here's the deal, I've been doing some stuff
lately involving C and I'm trying to understand it. I'm
understanding it better than I ever did but it's still not
"clicking" very well yet. I'm "getting there" though and
that's a good thing as far as I can tell.

On the other side of things I am reading more about the
history of the united States of America. I am also reading a
lot about the laws of the past and the current
implementation of law. It's a really sad thing to read
though because of some of the blatant violations of those
laws the united States government has committed. There are
some very interesting sites to look over about the topic of
government corruption and the ones to really look for are
ones with code citings and regulation citings and executive
order citings. They are generally better off because you can
open up another browser window or run another instance of
lynx or whatever and go to www.law.cornell.edu.
Mind you, the site uses java on the front page so that
pretty much sucks but you can access things like the U.S.
Code, the
constitution, and the U.S. code of
federal regulations (coincides to some degree with the
U.S. Code). There is more to it than just looking up the
code and regulations. There is a large page on a .gov site,
I forget the URL, with a cross reference of everything that
is actually a law. If I find the URL I'll put it on here.

Bah. I hope I am wrong on this and I hope many others are
wrong on this but it would seem there will probably be some
sort of knee-jerk reaction to all of this with regards to
computer technology. Namely -- encryption. I'm reading far
too many stories putting encryption in a bad light and
whatnot for the sake of having a story to print.

Today hasn't been too bad. I only woke up at 3:30PM ... =(
So I haven't been awake for too long and I haven't eaten
anything yet. I've been reading some things today and doing
some work on my server. Decided I want to go back to a
stable apache so I can have php again (I was running the
latest cvs code). I might consider running FreeBSD-CURRENT
on my server soon but I'm not too sure about that yet. I
will almost definitely run -CURRENT on my laptop soon
because I could use some more fine-grain power management
and better support for the hardware in general. That and I
have an idea for something which was suggested to me a while
ago about making some firewall extensions. I would like to
do something where you say "only this (or these, perhaps a
list in a configuration file) program(s) can access the
Internet" or something like that. You get
the idea. So that would be cool. It'd be more fine grained
than just blocking tcp/udp/icmp etc. OTOH I can imagine that
would inflict some serious overhead on the system. This is
the price you pay for a little more security...
I guess in some way it's like what linux's
netfilter/ipchains/whatever the fuck it's called does except
it'll be done on a non-toy OS. I see that ipfw does uid/gid
filtering which is nice but it's not enough. Honestly I
don't even know if it's a good idea to try and stop
individual programs from using the network. It seems you can
only do so much with being able to block certain ports,
flags, options, types, etc. So I guess it wouldn't be a bad
idea. I'm open to suggestions if you want to email me.

I'm finally reading more into 4.4 BSD D&I...something I
should have done a long time ago. I would like to
learn a little more about filesystems some time soon.

I don't think I'm going to be IRC'ing anymore for a number
of reasons. I'm tired of all the fighting and whining that I
do. It doesn't make me feel good to fight and complain all
the time so why bother? Besides that -- idling is rather
boring too and a big waste of time. I said it before on IRC
that I am unproductive when I am on there. So I think it's
time to be a little more permanent on a previous decision I
had made. Believe it or not this has very little to do with
events that happened last night -- I've been feeling this
way for a while now and think it is time to stop wasting
time (heh). I don't think many people would disagree that
IRC can be very unproductive while it can be very productive
as well; it just depends on the topic and the people I
guess. As has been said about me before I do not have much
skill with programming but I am going to change that...somehow.

So today marks a new day (this is getting very repetitive
isn't it?). I think I've probably said that at least once
before. Oh well :).

If it weren't for the fact that I like having a healthy
liver, a healthy brain, etc. I would probably go get fucked
up because I feel like damaging myself. However, getting
fucked up is not in the list of priorities so that won't
happen. I've never been so depressed as I am right now and
am, in some strange way, proud of the fact that I haven't
turned into an alcoholic yet.

Bye people. Don't be surprised if I don't write another
entry for a long time (though it would behoove me to keep up
with this).

Man. I feel sick. I haven't been sleeping very well. Haven't
been sleeping much at all actually and when I do it's at
very strange hours...again. But today I feel really sick. My
stomach is aching like a little bitch and my eyes are
burning after I lit some incense.

Lots on my mind over the past few years. More than I can
really try to put down here. Things like where to get a job,
should I give college a try again, etc. Not sure if I even
want to stay in this country. Not sure about how to teach
myself some things I need to learn. However I am sure about
a couple of things. I am sure that when someone doesn't know
the same things I know I'll put a little extra effort into
not rubbing that fact in. I know that I have just had one of
the worst fights with my mother ever. I know that I have
some serious problems, physically, that need to be addressed
really soon. I know that there are a lot of problems in this
world and not a whole lot is really being done about them.
If I really tried I could probably generate a list the size
of a encyclopedia of problems this world has.

Yeah so my mom thinks I have a porn addiction. My mom thinks
I need to find "God" too so take that for what it's worth.
My mom thinks a lot of things. My mom tries to be the mom of
a little child probably because she wasn't really much of a
mother when I was younger and was living with my father.

Knowing that this is really intended for developers and
whatnot I shall keep this short. Maybe I will do something
on my website some day.
I don't know if I really care much about these things
anymore. It seems there are far more pressing matters than
whether or not I understand C.

Man. I just noticed a horrible typo in my diary entry. So I
am editing this. I typed "I believe it is far more important
to not do whatever you can to help the people in New York
and Washington D.C." There should be no "not" in that
sentence. I'll blame this on just poor typing and not
checking it over before posting. Sorry to anyone this might
have angered (no one has said anything -- I just noticed).

This is extremely delayed because I've actually been sort of
busy watching TV. That's very unusual for me but given the
events that have happened yesterday I think it's warranted.
This drivel that Americans love war is such total bullshit.
The drivel about guns being on planes, shit like that, this
isn't the time. I believe it is far more important to not do
whatever you can to help the people in New York and
Washington D.C. I believe that praying, if it makes you
happy, is fine. Don't expect me to think any higher of you
because you're performing such acts.

I am very unsure about what I am going to do. I would very
much so enlist if the need arises. I have already attempted
to join the Army and the Marines when I turned eighteen
(will be a year in october). However I was rejected due to
asthma. I am horribly overweight which concerned the Army
but the Marines showed me that they were willing to try and
get me into shape for it but when they asked about physical
conditions they told me it wasn't possible. =( As much as I
dislike war and I dislike military actions they are a
necessary evil of the times and have been for quite a very
long time.

Events have transpired that I'd hoped for a long time never
would but they have and they must be dealt with. There is no
intelligent answer anyone has come up with as an alternative
to retaliation. So if you think retaliation is unnecessary
I'd suggest you come up with a damn good solution real
fucking fast. Otherwise you need to shut the fuck up and do
your part to help in any way possible. Joseph Mallett has
written an article and mentioned some things you can do if I
recall correctly. If I'm wrong then you needn't look much
further than a news site such as CNN.com to find something.

Otherwise I am for the most part speechless in reference to
the whole thing. I think it is nuts that people go to these
extremes in any part of the world, not just America. Now
that it has finally hit home a little harder than ever
before I think people will finally wake up to the reality
that we are not as safe as we sometimes, very arrogantly at
times, believed we were. There are huge oceans separating
the lands of the people at war with each other at times but
that does not guarantee any amount of protection when people
are absolutely determined to get the job done.

I must say that watching this all happen on TV is certainly
something I will never forget and I cannot imagine too many
people that have seen it in person or otherwise will not
forget this for the rest of their lives. Seeing the people
jumping out of the building was awful, seeing the buildings
collapse was a spectacular, in a very bad way, thing to see.
It was completely numbing to watch those buildings fall. I
think it is, as an aside, a great testimony to the strength
of some of these more modern buildings that it lasted as
long as did but the result is still the same no matter how
long they lasted.

An to hopefully end this now I must say that being prejudice
is the worst thing anyone can do right now. Maintain
composure and try to go about your daily life as you did
before, though I know that is very difficult to do right
now. If you see someone committing hate crimes against a
group of people or one person of a certain nationality,
report it to the police immediately.

I just want to say that this is undoubtedly the worst couple
days of my life. Seeing the nation I used to value so much
when I was younger get attacked is a very sad thing indeed
no matter how much I disagree with the politics. Seeing
-any- nation get attacked in such manners is saddening. It
is such a shame that we cannot act civilized towards fellow
human beings. I can only hope the entire world gets a very
serious wake up call from this event so that at least
something good may come out of it.

Oops, I forgot to mention in the previous entry that my site
is currently down because I may kill off the domain (i.e.,
no longer use the server to host a site or anything of the
sort). The odds are good I'll at least start the site again
just because I need somewhere to put docs and things. I
tried this once before -- turning the server into a
fileserver/webserver for personal usage and the occasional
link dropping on irc to something interesting I think I did
or whatever. The site is never spectacular and it doesn't
get many hits but I don't care because it's not supposed to. :)

I am in a most unlovely mood. I am obsessing over
people/things again in my highly incompatible with those
people/things life. Ugh. I am so fucking bored. I am so
fucking tired. I am so fucking drained. Yet I do nothing.
Why? I am emotionally exhausted. My physical condition is
not helping the matter. Soon we (my mother and I) will be
moving into a house. I should be happy, right? No more
apartments for me. No more worrying about playing my music
too loud. No more worrying about whether or not the stupid
land-lord (hah) is actually going to fix the leaky faucet
this time. So I should be happy then because I'll have my
own room once again with my little slice of privacy, right?
HAH. I have just now decided to start liking this area. It's
nice. The people are generally nice, though I very rarely
actually interact with them, and the township acts like a
community. That could be just as bad as it is good but it's
nice to see people fucking get along for once. Although I
doubt the sincerity of many of those people they still act
it out well enough to make it liveable.

I am starting to really think about what the hell I am going
to do with the rest of my life. I am not happy about the
options because I don't even know what all my options are. I
have considered writing because my past experiences with
most (if not all) of my English teachers says that I am a
pretty decent writer when it's about something I really care
about. I feel so bad though because the things I say I care
about I am not really sure I care about them at all or if I
am just acting as though I care for some reason. It's very
confusing and somewhat scary to feel like you don't have
complete control over some of your thoughts and actions. The
possibilities of such things scare me a lot. Confused is
probably the closest term to match up with my emotions over
the past five years or so. Things just don't make sense. I
am hopelessly naive probably due to a lack of interaction
with the "real world" and I can't seem to budge my way into
it now that I'm older.

Speaking of older -- I will be nineteen years old in a month
and three weeks (approximately) or alternatively on October
25th if you must know the exact date. I am not looking
forward to yet another reminder that I have wasted a year
and a half of my life accomplishing very little.

My mother and I are really not getting along well lately. I
almost care but I try not to because I didn't really know
her much when I was growing up -- I just sort of visited her
every now and then. I don't think she really understands
what happens to someone when they don't grow up with them
even though they are their mother. I don't have that
mother/son relationship that some people have. I don't have
that caring I should probably have for her. She is not the
most cherished thing in my life and never will be. I had a
quick argument with her about buying things with cocoa in
them a few nights ago. She came home from work at like
8:30PM (rather early compared to some days) and I noticed
she got a few things from work (she works at a grocery
store...). One of the items was a quart of chocolate soy
milk. I should be thankful and happy that she's trying to
help me out with my vegan lifestyle change but I'm not going
to be happy when she buys things with cocoa. In case you
don't know why -- I read in the local paper about a slavery
problem with cocoa suppliers. Some of the suppliers are
buying slaves and using them as laborers to get their cocoa.
I do not support slavery and therefore I try to avoid things
with cocoa in them which is fine anyway because usually
things containing cocoa aren't that great for me. But with
her it's like "ah who cares I just want to try it". She also
accepted some fudge from my sister which was purchased at
one of the fudge shops in Wildwood, NJ. I wasn't happy with
that either but didn't really say anything about it.

So anyway -- she decides she's tired and goes to bed while
I'm trying to talk to her about this issue. She normally
does not go to bed until about 11PM -- it was 9PM. So I
continued to ask her about it as she's getting ready for bed
and all she does is ignore me. She never bothers telling me
why she is supporting these people and/or why she is giving
off the impression that she does not care about the problem.
I go off into this little room and do my thing after a few
minutes and she decides she's no longer tired and goes into
the living room to watch tv and call some people (!!!). I
just ignored the fact that she lied to me earlier when she
said she was tired and wanted to go to sleep and went about
my business as usual.

Okay so why did I bother typing all that out? Because I'm
pissed off. Just two days later she wants "to talk to you
for a few minutes". Oh my. NOW she wants to talk...two days
later. What the fuck. I told her I wasn't interested and she
got so pissed off at that. She starts yelling and saying
"you expect me to care about these people when you don't
care about anything I say"...uh okay. I just sat in the
little room and ignored her. Now maybe I am wrong here but I
really don't think I am -- she's telling me that because I
give off the impression that I don't care about her means
she can't care about slaves being used to harvest cocoa?
Does -anyone- else see the problem with that? So because we
have our problems means some other person has to suffer?
Granted someone could just as well say that the person is
likely to suffer anyway whether she buys things containing
cocoa or not and that's just fine. I still won't think
purchasing products from the companies that practice slavery
is a good idea nor will I do it.

I have a shit load more I want to write about but this is
getting very long. I am thinking of writing a script for a
movie -- very seriously considering it. Or at least writing
a book (going back quickly to my career prospects) about
something...I can't say what just yet. I have what I think
is a good idea for a book/movie/whatever but am not entirely
sure. I am getting extremely frustrated with my inability to
learn certain things and/or concentrate on certain things. I
think perhaps if I can get in shape physically and mentally
then maybe I can pursure more computer related things but
until that happens (which should be a hell of a lot easier
once we're in the house -- the primary reason I am doing no
weight lifting or anything of the sort is a lack of room --
I don't like going outside to exercise so I'd like to
confine it indoors as much as I can until I reach a certain
goal -- then I will go outside and exercise) I wish to
pursue other things and relax on the computer stuff for a
while. I'd like to pursue music and writing and perhaps even
some acting. I acted a very little tiny bit in fourth grade.
It was a nightmare for me but didn't really turn out too
bad. I was the lion in "Wizard of Oz" -- I had to sing and
run around a little bit so there wasn't a whole lot of
acting involved really but it was pretty neat. They had a
great little outfit for me to wear and all and I might still
have the picture of me wearing it.

Ah well...life really isn't as bad as I might make it out to
be for me. I have a lot of ups and downs just like everyone
else does. Some people are more level-headed than I am and
some people are more wise than I am because they have more
of that "real world" experience. So I want to write. Maybe
journalism or something. Freelance journalism ... *cough* no
money *cough* but what the fuck I'm not making any money
sitting here on this chair either so why not? It just might
work. If all else fails I fall back on music and then
computers. I don't want to make computers a primary anymore
because it's draining my life away in a hurry. I need the
social interaction I didn't get when I was a kid or I will
be hopeless for relationships...

Much as I cannot stand WinME I actually installed it over
FreeBSD today. I cannot get X working and I can't get the
sound to work. That just about renders it useless for my
needs but I'd like to some day work on a driver for it.
Some day :). Right now it has WinME and I just got Cunning
Stunts on DVD to watch. So far the dvd is okay but it could
be better I suppose (I'd really like to try it with the TV
output but I need a TV that doesn't suck and an S-video
cable).

Aside from all that I'll probably only use WinME for about
a week to get some usage out of it. Then I think I'll put
FreeBSD-CURRENT back on it and perhaps start trying to help
out the xMach team a
little bit (some code review and whatnot). I'd really love
to learn how to get a sound card driver running on this but
that'll be a while.

My mom is really pissed off because I bought the Cunning
Stunts dvd. I told her what was on it and she was mad. I
was laughing so hard at Lars picking his nose and eating it
and I was like saying what he did. She didn't think it was
so funny. Oh well. =(

I really think she's upset that she can't watch what I'm
doing anymore. She has such a huge lack of trust in me. She
thinks I'm an evil hacker (I'm being serious) and I'm out
to do harm and watch porn all the time. I really haven't
been watching too much porn lately but I have plenty to
watch if need be. Life sucks when you're fat and ugly and
are good at not much else but typing. Oh well. There she
goes, off to work...one of these days I'll have a job that
isn't trying to rip me off for minimum wage even though I'm
doing $20/hour work. I know $20/hour isn't a whole lot but
it'd be great for me. I need a job. Time to go job
hunting...again. My resume is here.

Wheee. This is fun. I started working on a secure logging
machine paper. It's probably way overkill considering my
lack of experience in the area but I am going to try some of
the ideas when I get another machine (which could be quite a
while from now). My naivity would be readily apparent to any
experienced systems administrator if he/she were to read my
beginning of the paper but it's fun because I'm getting down
a few ideas. They're my ideas that are largely unaffected by
the outside world. We shall see how much work I have to do yet.

I'm really starting to gain an interest in security. I am
trying so hard to learn C past printf(). ;) It's not easy
for me because I have a hard time remembering what I read. I
used to be so good at reading/comprehension...something went
wrong a long time ago and it just isn't so anymore. =(

But anyway, I just want to audit code for a while and see
what I can pick up on just by reading full (not just partial
clippings) code examples of bad and good code side by side.
I am finally beginning my security approaches on my server
because I think it's time I start using some of the things I
keep talking about to other people or I just think about.

Oh and since it's pretty much a dead issue now I figure I'll
go ahead and paste my codered scan count. =)

Let's see....I'm writing a preliminary paper on system
administration security. It'll be my first ever paper
related to administration. I don't expect it to be perfect
and I certainly don't expect it all to be right. However I
do expect it'll be a nice place to start from.

This isn't going to be anything really serious or high-tech
or anything of that sort. It's just my first try at writing
a somewhat technical paper. There's a reason for writing it
and that is to get my ideas down somewhere so I don't forget
them. The information is almost pure because I've only had a
minimal amount of outside impact on my administration
habits. I've been mostly a loner for a while now but
recently I'm starting to read more papers so I want to get
down the unadulterated ideas before I become biased from any
one paper.

An example of what I'm writing about is useless binaries
being installed on the system. Checking what all system
binaries do and what they depend on. Figure out why they're
dependent/depended on and if their security does not meet
your standards (coding security) figure out if they're
really necessary. If not then see if it's possible to hack
the programs that depend on them. Stuff like that and
perhaps a little bit about network security. Mostly it'll
just be local security though because networking isn't my
strong point just yet. Hopefully I'll have some tangible
(sp?) work done soon and I'll put it on my website and
update this to point to it.

Bah. After watching CSPAN coinciding with a irc
channel chat
I must say I am thoroughly embarassed with myself and the
way I handled myself. I spent about five minutes trying to
get through to CSPAN so I could comment on the proposed
amendment to the constitution of the U.S.A. I got through
and completely lost any amount of control I might have had
intially. I was so scared I was shaking. I got on the air
(live, no less) and mentioned that I could not believe I had
to pay taxes for these people to argue such a dead topic. I
also (seemingly as an afterthought) dropped in the part
about freedom of expression/speech I believe we are supposed
to have in this country as well as the ability to address
the government with grievances (which the first amendment
does not prescribe any particular method which has to be
performed to do such things). I made such an ass out of
myself because of the way I spoke and the lack of thought
before speaking. It would have helped to write it down but I
just wasn't thinking. And so I repeat that it is almost
always best to think before you speak and I must try harder
to say before I go ahead and make an ass out of myself on
national television. (This was seriously one of my most
embarassing moments in life to date.)

New Advogato Features

New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser
code is live. It needs further work but already handles most
markup better than the original parser.